One of the world's most successful and yet mysterious companies in the world, Samsung Electronics, has been operating without its leader for months and likely will continue to do so for some time to come.

Neither a success nor by any means a failure, Roku will nevertheless ask public investors for money because they, too, have a right to dream that magic will become reality one day.

Roku collects money two ways: by selling hardware, which it calls 'players'; and by selling advertising and taking a cut of revenues from the video publishers on its platform.

If you crave further confirmation that Silicon Valley is a magical place where magical thinking reigns, consider the tale of Roku, the video streaming company that filed to go public Friday, when alert people everywhere were headed out for a long weekend.

With innovative companies and products like Tencent's WeChat messaging service and novel approaches to artificial intelligence and various business models, China rapidly is becoming an innovator in its own right.

For years now, we've been hearing about how China is the great copycat nation, the manufacturer of designs drawn up in other countries, and then an imitator for its own products. That's been true, as the developing country followed a path that Japan and then Korea plowed before it.

Apple is a military-like command-and-control organization where people lower down in the organization manage up. They are constantly preparing their boss who may be preparing their boss and their boss for a presentation to the CEO or to the executive team.

Apple is so secretive internally, they keep secrets from each other.

Apple does a very good job of not letting its competitors know what it is working on, and Apple does a very good job of not confusing customers by causing them to anticipate what the next new thing is going to be and then causing those customers not to buy the products that are on the shelves now.

Chinese companies, in their well-capitalized, rapidly growing, and surprisingly lightly regulated markets, have become global innovation leaders.